A Silent Death

by Peter May

  Immediately she smells fresh coffee and hot churros. A hand on her arm startles her, and she recognizes Cleland’s earthy scent. He guides her quickly but gently towards her computer and eases her into her seat. She feels for and finds the small vibrating disk that she pins immediately to her blouse. Almost at once she feels it vibrate against her skin.

  Fingers on her screen decipher his message.

  – Good morning, Ana. I hope you like churros. You’ll find a plate of them and some coffee on the table in front of you.

  ‘I’m not hungry,’ is her instinctive response. Even although she is.

  – Well, that’s a pity. If you don’t want them I might have to eat them myself. I love churros, don’t you?

  No response.

  – I’ve eaten far too many of them since I’ve been in Spain. Much better than porridge! But fattening, don’t you think? So much here is fried. A bit like Scotland. I’ve put on too much weight. He paused. Angela, on the other hand, could eat anything and never put on an ounce. Oh, I’m sorry, imperial measures. What would you say? A gram?

  Ana sits in silence, fingers dancing across the screen to read his rambling. None of it, she thinks, requires a response.

  – Of course, there’s no danger of Angela ever putting on weight now, is there?

  ‘Where’s Sergio?’ She isn’t going to play his game, and can almost hear him sighing in the pause before his reply.

  – He’s gone.

  ‘What did you do to him.’

  – I didn’t do anything. Pause. Well, I did. I hit him over the head. I’m sorry. He’s going to have a bad headache this morning, but he’s probably more upset by what I told him.

  ‘What did you tell him?’

  – That you didn’t want him to come back. Ever.

  She knows he is lying. How could he possibly have explained to Sergio why he had struck him? And then just let him go. She is consumed by fear for her teenage amour. But knows she has to keep Cleland talking. About anything. The more she can build a rapport with him the less likely he is to hurt her. She hopes.

  ‘Why are you doing this?’

  – Because your niece killed the woman I was going to marry. The woman who was carrying my child.

  This is news to Ana. Did Cristina know that Cleland’s woman was pregnant? But she wants to steer him away from that. ‘No, I mean, everything you do, everything you are. After Cristina told me about you, I searched the internet for more information. There is plenty out there about you. Newspaper articles. Police bulletins. Even a page in Wikipedia.

  – Really? I didn’t know that.

  She somehow detects pleasure in this response and decides to play on his ego. ‘I suppose you’re a little bit famous in your own way.’

  – Just a little bit?

  Which only confirms for Ana that Cleland is more than just a little bit self-obsessed. Image is a skin people wear to hide their real selves. And Cleland is clearly concerned with his. Even to the point of lying to himself about who was actually responsible for Angela’s death. Because, after all, how could he live with himself if he were to admit responsibility for killing the mother of his child, along with the child itself? It wouldn’t fit with his own carefully cultivated self-image. Invincible dealer in drugs, respected and feared in his own circles, always one step ahead of the police. Living the life of a wealthy retiree on the Costa del Sol, right under the noses of the authorities. She says, ‘Quite a lot, I suppose.’ Then hesitates. ‘What I don’t understand is why.’

  – Why?

  ‘Your parents were wealthy.’

  – So?

  ‘They sent you to the best schools, paid your way through Oxford. You never wanted for anything.’

  – Nothing material, no.

  ‘So what possible reason could you have for turning to crime?’

  There is a very long pause.

  – That’s a good question, Ana. And I don’t pretend there’s any easy answer.

  His subsequent response is peppered with long pauses as he reflects, perhaps for the first time, on why he has taken this particular route through life.

  – It all sounds very grand, doesn’t it? Wealthy parents, private schools, an Oxford education. The reality was something else. Parents who never wanted me in the first place. A mother and father who couldn’t wait to shuffle off responsibility to nannies and schoolmasters. I was just an inconvenience. We lived in Edinburgh, for God’s sake, and yet they had me board at Fettes, less than a mile from the family home. Lavished with everything money could buy. Except for love. Which, of course, you can’t buy, as The Beatles so eloquently pointed out to my parents in their youth.

  A very long pause now. So long that Ana begins to wonder if he is still there.

  – I have no doubt you could regale me with tales of growing up in impoverished southern Spain. But you could never understand how hard it was for a boy abandoned by his parents to spend all his young years in a series of soulless dormitories. Where if you weren’t bullied to tears by the big boys, you were punished for crying by the masters. On my 17th birthday my father had a car delivered to my door. A red Porsche 911. The envy of every other boy in the school.

  Again he pauses.

  – I’d have given all the Porsche 911s in the world for just a little of his time. But, oh no, my father never had time. At least not for me. Packed me off to Oxford with a generous allowance and the keys to my own apartment. God, how lucky was I?

  Although she could neither see nor hear him, she could feel the bitterness in his words.

  – It became clear to me, Ana, that if no one else was going to have time for me, then I would just have to make the time for myself. Amazing how quickly the calluses grow and the hurt goes away. Extraordinary how you can segue from being the receiver of pain, to being the giver of it. And what pleasure there is in that.

  She can visualize the cursor blinking on his screen as he composes his thoughts for what is to come next.

  – Those bullies . . . the ones who made my life so bloody miserable . . . I came across a few of them in later years. Well, actually, I sought them out. And they found out pretty fucking fast that dealing with the adult Jack was a whole other experience from beating up on some pathetic kid. That’s what you call taking back power, Ana. And there are very few feelings in this world quite that good.

  She does not know now if he has finished, if he has spent his ire. Or whether there is more to come. So she prompts him.

  ‘I read that you were one of the top traders in the biggest commercial bank in London.’

  – Best trader on the floor.

  ‘You couldn’t have been short of money, then.’

  – If there’s one thing I learned from my folks, Ana, it’s that money isn’t everything. But there I was, Mr Dealmaker, buying and selling just seconds before stocks soared or plummeted. Making fortunes – for someone else. So it was back to the old axiom. Look after Number One. Along came a different kind of deal. One in which I controlled everything, including the profits.

  ‘Drugs.’

  – A street commodity, he corrects her. Following the basic precepts of Capitalism. Supply and demand. There was a demand, I supplied it. But it’s a very different environment from the trading floor. Get it wrong and people want to kill you. So you get tough. You learn that there’s no place for sentiment. If someone wants to kill you, you kill them first. Law of the jungle. And I was good at that. Mad Jock, they called me. Still do, for all I know. We Scots have a certain reputation to maintain.

  She doubts very much if it is a reputation that John Mackenzie would approve of. And almost as though he has heard the thought echoing in her darkness, she detects vitriol in his next words.

  – They’ve sent another Jock to catch me. But he’s no match for me, Ana. I smelled his breath, and his hair gel and his aftershave. I heard his Glasgow brogue. Some knucklehead cop looking to make a reputation at my expense. I’m going to kill him, too.

  For the first time, Ana fee
ls despair wash over her. The skin of Cleland’s self-image fits him so tightly there is no room for reason. The calluses so thick he has no sense of other people’s pain, never mind his own. She says, ‘I grew up in a religious family, and though I’ve never had any time for God I would never knowingly hurt another human being, or take from him or her what is not mine. I’ve heard that abused children often become abusers themselves. I have never understood that. Surely no one better knows the pain of abuse? I find it hard to have sympathy for you.’

  – I’m not asking for any!

  ‘I’ve had none of your advantages in life, señor, but would never have projected my own misfortune on to others as you have done.’

  Again the long pause. Is he analysing her words or simply controlling his anger? When it comes, his reply surprises.

  – You are right. Fate has dealt you a hand much worse than mine. I can’t imagine how it would be to have my sight and hearing taken away. That is unimaginable, Ana.

  She feels no compulsion to reply.

  – Tell me about you and Sergio.

  She feels a constriction of the muscles all around her heart, but says nothing.

  – Tell me.

  ‘No.’

  – Tell me, Ana.

  Although they are only raised dots on her screen, she can feel his frustration in them and realizes that she cannot afford to excite his anger. ‘Why?’

  – I’d like to know.

  She draws a deep breath. And tells him. Everything. Meeting Sergio at the centre. Her parents’ disapproval. The diagnosis of Usher Syndrome and Sergio’s offer to share the learning of touch-signing with her. Their blossoming romance, the meals at Santa Ana, and then her father’s physical attack on the young man.

  ‘I learned only yesterday that my father had gone to Sergio’s parents, and that they had threatened to withdraw support and patronage if he didn’t stop seeing me.’

  – And he agreed?

  ‘I never saw or heard anything of him again until yesterday. I thought . . .’ She chokes on the thought and feels tears welling.

  – You thought what?’

  ‘I thought that finally I might have someone to spend my life with. Someone to share the darkness, and the silence.’

  Cleland’s silence lasted so long she really did believe that this time he had gone.

  ‘Hello . . . ?’

  Nothing.

  ‘Señor?’

  Finally a vibration at her breast.

  – What was worse? Losing your sight or your hearing?

  No reaction to her story. Nothing. Just a change of subject as if, in spite of his asking, her story was not the one he wanted to hear. She realized she would have to respond.

  ‘I was always prepared for the fact that one day I would lose my hearing completely. But nothing prepares you for blindness.’ She pauses and runs the rule of recollection back over the years. ‘Though perhaps, strange as it seems, the thing I miss most is music. I loved my music as a kid. Everyone else has a soundtrack to their lives. Mine is silence.’ And she can almost hear the silence in the room that follows. Finally, her buzzer vibrates once more against her chest.

  – One day, Ana, if we both survive this, I’ll see that you never want for anything again. That’s a promise.

  She has not the least idea how to respond.

  – I have to go out for a while.

  And she finds herself suffused with relief. Space to think. Time to try and find a way out of this.

  – Just don’t even think of trying to alert anyone. People can die too easily. Especially little children.

  *

  Cleland sat looking at the sightless woman perched on the chair opposite. Two screens between them. Conduits of communication. Her way of reaching the world beyond silence and darkness. His way of reaching into hers.

  He recalled slapping her yesterday. Twice. And felt immediate regret. Like striking a helpless animal. No way for her to hit back. Which made him no better than those bullies who had so relentlessly tormented him through all his miserable childhood. He wanted to reach out and take her hand and tell her he was sorry. Such an alien impulse that he was completely unable to act upon it, and sat just staring at her face. And thought about Sergio.

  He had not meant to hit Sergio so hard. If he had known then just how much he meant to Ana . . . It was just one more thing taken from her. God had robbed her of her sight and her hearing. Cleland had stolen her freedom. And her love.

  And Angela. He had taken her life. He screwed his eyes tight shut and felt hot tears squeezing out between the lids to track their way down a tanned face starting to show the ravages of stress. If it hadn’t been for that stupid bloody policewoman . . .

  He reached over to grab the untouched plate of churros in front of Ana, and the mug of cooling coffee, and hurled both at the wall with a force only matched by the strength of the roar of pure frustration that rose from his throat and resonated in the still morning air.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Outside the police station the sun beat down mercilessly on the pavements of Marviña, the early morning freshness long since burned off. Here in the interview room, where there were no windows, LED strips on the ceiling reflected a bright unforgiving light back off every hard surface. It was sticky hot, and Carlos Castillejos dripped sweat from the end of his long nose on to the plasticized pages of the book of mug shots they kept in the evidence room of the Policía Local. A gallery of rogues scowling at the lens, faces that in some cases reflected defeat, in others defiance. All taken at the moment of arrest and maximum vulnerability.

  Carlos displayed no interest in identifying any of the faces that slid by in front of him. He knew what it could cost to get on the wrong side of any of these people. But his wife leaned in against him, scrutinizing each one. She knew the Fernández family well, she had told Cristina. She had been at school with the wife, and as teenagers they had gone to dances together down in Marviña, staying over at the house of her cousin, often sharing a bed, as well as tales of romantic encounters. She was riven with grief.

  Suddenly she stabbed a finger at a swarthy face that stared at her with simmering resentment from the pages of the book. ‘Him!’ she said. ‘That’s him. He was the leader.’

  Carlos threw her a warning look. ‘Mariana,’ he said quietly, but with an underlying menace. She was oblivious.

  ‘Are you sure?’ Cristina asked.

  ‘That face will be etched in my memory till the day I die,’ she said.

  ‘Which might be quite soon if you don’t shut up,’ Carlos growled. All pretence of cooperation with the police had vanished in an instant.

  ‘He was the one who said we should get the signpost fixed.’ Mariana was clearly back at the finca looking into this man’s ugly face as he sneered at her. ‘He thought it was funny. After what they had done to the Fernández family, he thought it was a joke!’ She couldn’t keep the disgust from her voice. ‘Who is he?’

  Cristina said, ‘You don’t need to know.’ She turned the book towards herself and looked at the details on the reverse of the page. Roberto Vasquéz. A petty criminal with a string of convictions for possession. Suspicions of dealing unproven. She unclipped the ring binder and removed the page, then returned the book for the Castillejos to continue looking.

  Within half an hour they had exhausted the station’s photographic record of petty criminals. There were no further identifications. Cristina herself had looked at each face with every turn of the page and thought how, after a while, they all started to look the same. Different faces, but the same dead eyes.

  She left Carlos and Mariana in the interview room to vent their domestic disharmony while she took the mug shot of Vasquéz to the front office, where she composed a request for further information from UDYCO in Malaga, then faxed it along with the photograph to the drugs unit in the provincial capital. She headed along the corridor to the meeting room where the Jefe was chairing a briefing.

  As she came through the door
the Jefe was saying, ‘Information is gold dust here. I want you to lean on every source and every resource we have. Someone knows something, that’s for sure. It’s the where and the when we’re interested in, and we’re running out of time. The drugs are on the move, so we can assume that everyone involved is too.’

  A dozen or more officers sat upright in hard, uncomfortable seats listening to the chief with mixed feelings. Mackenzie sat among them watching faces that betrayed ambivalence. This was a small community. Police officers lived locally with their families, and were known to everyone. Getting on the wrong side of the drugs lords could bring unwanted attention. And retribution. On the other hand, here was the chance to be a hero. The one to supply the missing piece of the jigsaw. It could lead to commendation, promotion.

  Cristina marched to the front of the room and handed the mug shot of Vasquéz to the Jefe. ‘The ringleader,’ she said. ‘Señora Castillejos recognized him straight away. I’ve shared with UDYCO and asked for more info.’

  The Jefe took the clear plastic folder containing the photograph and stuck it with Blu-tack to a whiteboard on a tripod behind him. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Some of you will know this guy. Let’s get every bit of info on him that we can. Last known address, known associates, where he drinks, where he takes a piss. Everything. And let’s bring him in.’

  He reached for a pile of printed sheets on the desk beside him and started handing them out.

  ‘And these are the places Cleland in his persona as Templeton is known to have frequented. Bars, restaurants, golf course, marina. Again we’re looking for anyone with connections to Templeton. Fellow diners, drinking buddies, golf companions. Divide them up among yourselves.’ He turned towards Mackenzie. ‘It would be useful if you checked out the expat haunts.’ He smiled. ‘Your English is a little better than most of ours.’

  As the meeting broke up, Mackenzie scanned the list and approached the Jefe. ‘What about the golf course, chief?’

  He nodded. ‘Yes, take that, too. Lot of foreigners with golf club membership. That’s what most of them come here for, after all. I’ll be up there myself later.’ He sighed. ‘The police sponsor an annual competition at Balle Olivar to coincide with the festival of San Isidro in Estepona. My turn to make a little speech and fire the starter gun on the first tee. A damned inconvenience, and I’d get out of it if I could, but it won’t take long.’